- UK release: November 2012
- Director: Ben Affleck · Writer: Chris Terrio
- Studio / distributor: Warner Bros.; GK Films; Smokehouse Pictures
- Genre: Political thriller / historical drama · Runtime: 120 minutes (BBFC 15)
- Main cast: Ben Affleck (The Town, Good Will Hunting) as Tony Mendez; Bryan Cranston (Drive, Little Miss Sunshine) as Jack O’Donnell; Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine, Glengarry Glen Ross) as Lester Siegel; John Goodman (The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink) as John Chambers; Victor Garber (Titanic) as Ken Taylor
- Rotten Tomatoes: 96% critics / 90% audience · My rating: 8.5 / 10
Two films ago, Ben Affleck was a punchline. The arc from Gigli to behind the camera has been quietly remarkable, and Argo is the film that retires the joke for good. Gone Baby Gone showed he could direct actors; The Town showed he could stage a robbery and a chase and keep the tension honest. Argo is the step up the ladder, a true-story thriller that asks him to hold three tones at once, espionage, Hollywood satire and pure white-knuckle escape, without dropping any of them. He does it with a confidence that suggests the directing chair, not the marquee, is where he was always headed.
The setup
Tehran, November 1979. Revolutionary students storm the US embassy and take its staff hostage, but in the chaos six Americans slip out a side door and shelter in the home of the Canadian ambassador. They cannot stay hidden forever, and they cannot simply walk to the airport. Enter Tony Mendez (Affleck), a CIA exfiltration specialist whose job is getting people out of places they should not be. His plan is so absurd it loops back round to plausible: build a fake Hollywood science-fiction film, a Star Wars knock-off called Argo, and walk the six out of the country in broad daylight as its Canadian location-scouting crew. To sell the cover he needs the film to look real, which means recruiting the one industry on earth that can fake anything at short notice. The clock is the antagonist here, and the screenplay keeps you aware of every tick of it.
The cast
Affleck the actor plays Mendez as a still point, watchful and tired, letting the panic happen around him rather than performing it himself. It is a generous lead turn that hands the showier work to the ensemble, and the ensemble repays it. The Hollywood half of the film belongs to Alan Arkin and John Goodman, Arkin as a fictional veteran producer with a mouth like a paper shredder, Goodman as the real make-up legend John Chambers, and their double act gives the picture its laughs and its heart. “Argo eff yourself” should not be as funny as it is, and yet. Bryan Cranston, all jaw and institutional fury back at Langley, supplies the procedural urgency, the man fighting the building so Mendez can fight the country. Victor Garber lends the Canadian end its quiet decency. The six houseguests stay deliberately under-drawn, which is the one place the casting strategy shows its seams.
The craft
The craft is where Argo earns its keep. Rodrigo Prieto shoots on grainy stock and frames it like the period it depicts, so the seam between archive footage and staged material almost disappears; the opening storyboard prologue and the embassy assault are masterfully assembled. William Goldenberg’s editing is the real star, cross-cutting the Tehran bazaar, the Langley war room and a Beverly Hills table read in the final act until the three threads pull taut as one wire. Alexandre Desplat scores it with restraint, holding back so the silences bite. Affleck understands the oldest rule of suspense, that the audience must know more than the characters, and he times every reveal to that principle. The last twenty minutes manufacture tension out of a foregone conclusion, which is the hardest trick a true-story thriller can attempt.
How it stacks up
The obvious lineage is the paranoid political cinema of the 1970s, and Argo wears the debt openly: the Warner Bros. logo even gets the old period treatment. It sits comfortably beside All the President’s Men for its faith in process and procedure, and beside Spielberg’s Munich for the way it treats a covert operation as moral weather rather than action-figure fun. Against Affleck’s own The Town it is the more disciplined film, trading the Boston heist’s muscle for something cooler and more cerebral. Where it parts company with its forebears is tone: those films were stony, and Argo lets itself be entertaining, even funny, without forfeiting the dread. That balance is its own achievement.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics have fallen hard, the reviews are close to unanimous, and audiences are right behind them. The praise lands on Affleck’s control, the ensemble, and the sheer watchability of it. The pushback, where there is any, is about dramatic licence, the late airport sequence in particular bends the historical record for thriller mechanics, and the Canadian contribution is shrunk to make room for the American hero. Both criticisms are fair. I would only say that the film never pretends to be a documentary, and it earns its liberties by being honest about what it is: a piece of popular cinema about a piece of theatre that saved six lives.
Verdict
This is grown-up, beautifully made studio film-making of a kind that feels increasingly rare, the sort of thriller that trusts its audience to follow a plan, savour a wisecrack and grip the armrest at the same time. It loses a fraction for the thinly drawn houseguests and for tidying history into a chase, and it is more admired than loved, more a film I will happily rewatch than one I will live inside. But the craft is close to flawless, the espionage and the satire feed each other instead of fighting, and Affleck has made the leap from likeable to genuinely accomplished director. 8.5⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now, and a strong bet for the awards-season conversation over the winter.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Argo went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with Oscars for its adapted screenplay and editing, despite Affleck’s notorious omission from the Best Director nominations, an absence that became part of the season’s story. Affleck has since moved deeper into franchise work, but Argo remains the clearest statement of what he can do behind the camera. The historical debate over its dramatised airport finale and its diminished Canadian role has only grown more pointed with time. It is now widely available on disc and digital, and streams on the major platforms depending on region.
BBFC content advice
Rated 15 by the BBFC for strong language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Language: There is use of strong language (‘f**k’).
Additional issues: There are scenes of moderate violence, including sight of rioting, a man being beaten in the street, and a lynched corpse hanging from a crane. The image of the man hanging from a crane is also shown during the end credits, side by side with the real life image which inspired it. However, the body is shown from a distance and without detail.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
